Something New!
Boxing Cats & More!
Streaming Video Comes to Western Libraries
By Julie Fitzgerald, Acquisitions & Serials Manager
This summer, working with our Orbis Cascade Alliance partners, Western Libraries added Academic Video Online (AVO).
This Alexander Street Press package provides streamed access to nearly 20,000 videos in 20 disciplines.
Disciplines include: art, architecture, business, counseling and therapy, dance, economics, education, ethnic studies, ethnography, gay and lesbian studies, health, history, humanities, law and public safety, literature, opera, philosophy, political science, psychology, religion, science, theatre, and women’s studies.
And, there is also a treasure trove of video worth viewing, well, just because you can! No assignment required.
From Professor Welton’s thirty-one second, 1894 Edison Company classic, "Boxing Cats," to recent release documentaries AVO’s got it. Check-out "Dizzy Gillespie At Ronnie Scott's," or "Wetlands Preserved: The Story of an Activist Rock Club," which tells the story of the famed NYC music club from its beginnings in a former Chinese food warehouse and includes concert footage of Dave Matthews, Bob Weir, Phish and others.
To find AVO go to the library catalog record and click on "Online access" or select it from the libraries A-Z database list. Additionally, a growing number of the videos can be found in the library catalog when searched by title, author, subject or keyword.
Once you have reached the AVO main page, films can be searched by title, author, subject, or by full-text across all of the disciplines or limited to those most appropriate to your research needs. Or just browse!
EXTRAS: Many of the films within AVO will allow you to track the screen image with print transcripts or to create online clips. Some even come with downloadable, supplemental study guides.
Alexander Street Press has created two easy to use video tutorials. VAST: Academic Video Online demonstrates the basic interface search features and introduces you to the creation of video clips and playlists which can be emailed, shared with groups or embedded into Blackboard or electronic coursepacks.
Creating Clips and Playlists provides further detail as well as instructions on sharing streaming content from sources such as Youtube.
For help locating and using streaming video contact the Information and Research Help Desk on Haggard 2, at 360-650-3094, or via the Ask Us! Answer Service.
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This Issue's Great Tip
Menus & Recipes of the Baron Brisse & More!
HathiTrust: Just a Click Away
By Paul Piper, Coordinator of Reference Services
Imagine that collections of materials held by sixty major research libraries across North America, with some European and Asian counterparts, were available for research and/or teaching with the click of a mouse. They are!
The HathiTrust (pronounced hah-tee, and named after the Indian word for elephant, a mammal renowned for its memory) offers you that opportunity.
HathiTrust’s overall collection of 10,524,402 total volumes, 5,546,641 book titles, and 273,854 serial titles are available for viewing by anyone, and 31% are copyright-free PDFs.
One of the coolest features of HathiTrust is that any non-member user (WWU is not a member) can set up unique collections, in subjects as diverse as Human Sexuality, Folklore, Papyrology and Apiology. These collections could be used for course reserves or as a unique research library.
The collection’s most prominent subjects are Language and Literature, followed by History, Sociology and Business & Economics. The primary language of the collection is English with 48%, followed by German, French, Spanish, Chinese, and others. The majority of materials are from the Twentieth Century, but nearly 2% of all materials are pre-1700s.
HathiTrust was formed in October, 2008 by thirteen university libraries to advance the progress made by the Google Book Project.  Librarians from these libraries knew Google didn’t have the same core goals as libraries do, namely preservation and free access to the published scholarly record, and they also recognized that no one library or library consortium was capable of achieving these goals.
So they drafted a plan flexible enough to involve major libraries and consortia worldwide. And in four short years the original thirteen participants have grown to a collaboration of over sixty consortia and libraries from three countries.
Utilizing digitized books from the Google Book project, the Internet Archive, Microsoft Live Search Books, as well as those of local individual libraries and consortia, HathiTrust coordinates technical platforms and findability for easy use.
The net result for you is that this collection, the largest digital archive on the Internet, can be searched and manipulated in any number of ways (including a full-text search). Visit the HathiTrust, roll up your sleeves, and have fun.
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